Return To Egypt

On February 16, 1861, Commissioner of the State of Louisiana, George Williamson speaking at the Texas Secession Convention stated: “The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African Slavery, if Texas either did not secede or having seceded should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy….The people of slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African-slavery….With the social balance wheel of slavery to regulate its machinery, we may fondly indulge the hope that our Southern government will be perpetual. “

One Hundred Forty-Six years later, every week several thousand African-Americans including Judges and lawyers walk under the Confederate Flag and Monument on the Caddo Parish Court House lawn, that honors people like Williamson. Shreveport’s first black mayor Cedric Glover became chief propagandist for the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, when he signed a proclamation declaring April to be Confederate History Month. Can you imagine Nelson Mandela after having defeated Apartheid declared April to be Apartheid month?

Glover states that he is attempting to promote understanding of the “root cause of the conflict” What kind of understanding can you promote by joining those who are attempting to positively promote a war whose “root cause” was to enslave human beings. Who do you need to educate? Certainly not Black people, we live with the legacy of the Confederacy everyday of our lives.

If Glover wanted to promote understanding he would have followed the moral courage of University of South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier, a son of the south, who recently declared it was time to remove the Confederate flag from his schools’ athletic events, by challenging the Caddo Parish Commission to take down that offensive relic that flies over a building of supposed Justice.

If Glover is indeed a “history buff” then he would have to know that the Generals whose statutes now sit on the court house lawn issued a standing order that any black soldier found in a Union uniform was to be shot on the spot. After a battle, confederate soldiers would walk among the wounded shooting black soldiers. It was such a horrendous policy, that white Union doctors would order that black soldiers wounded in battle be removed from the battle field first. The reason was that a wounded white soldier was more likely to be given medical attention and imprisoned rather than shot.

After the civil war and reconstruction, the same traitors who had declared war upon their country were given back control of the south and they and their prodigy began a hundred year reign of terror and forced apartheid on black citizens. Well into the mid 19th century lynching, a barbaric public ritual, was a common tool used to terrorize blacks. Among other indignities, Blacks were forced to take part in medical experimentations that are to heinous to mention in a newspaper.

Roger Anderson spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans stated the Klu Klux Klan “high jacked” their symbols. His movement and symbols got hijacked long before the Klan took up the cause.

Why would Glover give government sanction celebrating this sordid history?
History is about more than “visiting Civil War sites”. It’s about placing events into context and understanding the impact upon a nation and most importantly a people. Glover actions and statement lacked any historical context, and by aiding the Sons of the Confederate Veterans embarrassed the very people who lined up by the thousands in November to vote for him. They and the city deserved so much better from Glover.